Ultra processed food – a Toxin?
To perceive the horrific effects of ultra processed food (UPF) that is so detrimental to our collective and individual health – we need to first understand our changing life expectancies over the last 100 years or so.
In the early nineteen hundreds, the mean age of death in India was between 40 to 50 years. However, it progressively rose to around seventy by 2017. But in the last 5 to 7 years we see it gradually declining.
This is because, in the first half of the 20th Century, three good things happened from the disease point of view – vaccination, sanitation and antibiotics that increased our life span. But now, we see so many chronic diseases eating their way into our health and wellness. We are collectively becoming unhealthy due to the toxins that surround us – the major contribution coming from ultra processed food (UPF) that is stuffed with sugar and chemicals.
Fructose (fruit sugar) in high concentrations is a major toxin. It is around 7 times more addictive and damaging than sucrose (cane sugar). Fructose is added to almost every processed food that we eat. Calories coming from fructose cannot be utilised by the body for energy release. Instead, the liver converts all of it into fat for storage (non-alcoholic fatty liver). It’s a mitochondrial toxin that inhibits mitochondrial biogenesis (life from life), damages hepatic mitochondrial integrity (destroys liver cells) and mtDNA repair too – and that’s linked to cancer. Cumulatively, all this leads to inflammation, metabolic diseases and an increase in mortality rate.
Variety of sugars that appear in UPF are: high fructose corn syrup, fruit-juice-concentrates, invert sugar (high glycemic index – treated with heat and acid), maltodextrin (addictive), dextrose (used as artificial sweetener and as a preservative), and lactose.
In addition, UPF has omega-6 fatty acids – seed oils that are over processed and over heated to a point that they lose all the nutrients and natural flavours. Overheating breaks up the oil to form carcinogens.
Added to this, are the emulsifiers – similar to the ones you find in your clothes washing powder. They damage the mucin layers of the endothelial cells (GI tract barrier integrity) leading to gut and systemic inflammation.
Other terrifying chemicals added to UPF are MSG (taste enhancer), artificial dyes, defoaming agents (found in washing soaps), sodium nitrite which is used in metal treatment & paint jobs and a known carcinogen, artificial sweeteners, bisphenol A (used in plastic packaging), etc to name a few.
At the end of the day you are not eating food but chewing on flavoured plastic food and harmful chemicals.
So eat the food that comes out of the ground or eat animals as food, that eat the food that comes out of the ground. If you do that, you will be fine!
